Bringing the Ancient World Alive

by H. Bruce Baldwin
As a person that is interested in writing it is a major challenge to bring a world alive. Contemporary writers that deal in contemporary subjects do not have that problem as we see that world all around us, but when you are writing about a world that disappeared over 2000 years ago that is a different problem entirely. We can only glimpse that world through ruins and writings that have managed to come down to us through all these years. So is takes a great deal of research to understand and see that world.
Each of the books I have worked on I have this problem with. I have a little less difficulty with Egypt than with others as I am more familiar with the culture and the landscape so to speak. So it is easier to write about it than it is for Mesopotamia. Egyptian culture endured for over 3000 years and was pretty consistent in language and cultural values for most of that period. Mesopotamia went through a series of transformations though it roots were
revered for most of that time.
One feature of Mesopotamia is that the language changed over the centuries and was
affected by the peoples that invaded it. Unlike Egypt which was fortified by deserts on the east and west and only a very narrow entrance from the south and a wider entry on the east and
west in the north in the delta region, Mesopotamia had no such barriers and new
peoples could move in from any direction.
We know that originally the peoples of the region became mixed agriculturists along an arc that ran from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran along the Zagros Mountains. This has been called the Fertile Crescent. Here were the cereal grains that grew wild that fed them and allowed for a more complex system of life. Hunter-Gatherers became Herder-Agriculturists. between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE.
Sometime after that peoples discovered that an area in modern Iraq near the Persian Gulf
had a rich soil and that if you brought waters into the lands from the two great rivers of the region, which gave the Greek name Mesopotamia, between the rivers, they could grow crops here too. Quickly the land grew more and more prosperous and villages grew and culture became
more complex. These agriculturists had extra for those that specialized in religious functions and they made the temples. Around the temples the villages grew into the first cities. Uruk is one
such city and is considered by many as the first true city. Here also grew the Sumerian civilization.
Sumer or Sumeria, was not a unified country but made up of many competing city-states
which ruled over a series of smaller villages, and acted as the seat of power of a particular god or goddess, whose temple was located there. Land was precious and the waters of the rivers made it a valuable commodity. Water rights between the city-states were often in dispute and so there
was constant competition over control. The climate of Sumer was not as cool as that of the higher regions of the Fertile Crescent. Water was necessary for agriculture and the rivers could be capricious in their way the provided it. The Tigris River was particularly capricious sometimes flooding regions of Sumer leaving behind devastation. This may be the source of the Zuisudra, Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah, story. Exposed on all flanks these Sumerians were subject to raids from outside, such as Elam in southern Iran. This uncertainty is reflected in the myths of
the Sumerians too. And the only way we know these myths is that they invented a writing system that developed over the centuries from simple symbols to a system call cuneiform written in the most abundant material clay.
The Sumerians called themselves the Black-headed people and claimed in some accounts
to be from Dilmun which was mythic and yet real. Dilmun may have been Bahrain. The Sumerian language was not one related tom any other language we know but there are hints of few words being Indo-European but more likely barrowed word. These people
from all accounts were noted for their black hair and dark eyebrows which are depicted in their art.
Here is where my first book is set. Uruk, or Erech, is now just a mound in the desert southwest of Basra. In fact the entire land which had been the
source of Sumerian civilization is now mostly desert. Centuries of strife and lack of control of
water flow left much of this once fertile region polluted with salt and turned to desert. Uruk though was one of the richest cities of the area and under a secession of rulers came to be a leading city-state in the Early Dynastic Period, where the Gilgamesh Epic was set.
What was Uruk like at the time of The Gilgamesh Epic? First Uruk was not originally a city but two large villages that were so close that they practically were next to each other. One under the goddess of love and war, Inanna was Eanna and the village was called that. The other which was under the god An was Kullabs or Kullaba. This seems to be the oldests section of the city and perhaps the oldest such city in Sumer. Sometime, in their early history, but not recorded to my knowledge, the two villages united for mutual defense and formed Uruk. Uruk had a wall that surrounded it that stretched for 5.4 miles around the 3.6 square mile city. At this time the city was ruled by the priests of An. The priests were the earthly stewards of the lands which were conceived as being owned by the god of the city. This priest was called an ensi. As the city gained more prominence in Sumeria they gained in prestige. At some point an ensi through a war gained control of other cities. This was happening throughout Sumer. Each conquest was
seen as a gift of the god of that city. A common phrase to describe this was the “throne was lowered from heaven”. Eventually these ensis no longer were just priests but war-leaders, and when they grew so powerful they became the lugal, ‘man big” the word for king. What did these cities and particularly Uruk look like? This was a period long before city planning.
Streets were haphazard affairs twisting and narrow. The buildings lining them were blank to the
street except for doorways or gates. The streets were unpaved and sewage was thrown into them so that the city was dusty and smelled unpleasantly. But not all the city was buildings. Large areas were open with corrals for livestock and fields of grain and fruit trees. Since the city was built on the older city it slowly rose in height so that by the time the Gilgamesh story occurs, owing to the age of the city, the city was on a hill with the temples crowning the hill.
The river Euphrates flowed by the side of the city and it provide water and transportation to the city. Trade was a major portion of Uruk’s life and good times between wars meant wealth flowed
into the city by trade or from tribute. Still all in all the world of Sumer and Gilgamesh is partially surviving. Though city planning now controls the pattern of streets like old Jerusalem you will find old villages that have streets narrow and winding. People still build in ways that date back to the ancient Sumerians. Buildings usually center on a central courtyard and few windows face outward. The central courtyard is where much of daily life goes on. Even now these ancient ways are disappearing and like the Sumerians going into the lost world.
What of the Sumerians? The Sumerians being the first peoples in the region were the model for much of what came after. Semitic peoples slowly took over the lands and the language became
Semitic Akkadian. Uruk is actually the Akkadian version of the Sumerian Unug for the same place. Akkadian adopted and fit the cuneiform of the Sumerians and later peoples would follow their lead up to the time of the Greek conquest of Persia and even later when Aramaic supplanted the archaic cuneiform with a alphabetic form. As for the people themselves, they were absorbed into the populations that came after.